With rising health care costs, it is imperative that health care providers provide health services efficiently and cost effectively. At the same time, the administrative demands of medical record keeping, billing and managing a medical practice have become more burdensome. In particular, health care providers must be thorough and keep detailed records of medical exams to accurately document observations and services that have been provided. A number of software tools are available to help assist physicians in conducting medical diagnoses and medical record keeping. However, these tools have a number of deficiencies.
Some software programs used to diagnose medical problems start with the physician making a tentative diagnosis, and then proceed to collect medical observations which support, or clarify the tentative diagnosis. This can lead to inaccurate conclusions since the medical exam is likely to be biased by the original diagnosis.
Another limitation of many software systems used in medical practices is that they do not effectively manage the workflow within the hospital. In addition to diagnosing medical problems, it is useful to have a system for tracking the flow of patients in a hospital or medical office. Present systems do not effectively integrate workflow tracking with medical diagnosis functions.
Another limitation of existing software systems for medical practices is that they do not integrate treatment or therapy within the medical exam process. This is a significant drawback in medical diagnosis software because it does not provide the client or patient with information that will help them understand the cause of an ailment or educate them so that they can make educated decisions on treatment of it.